1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a system for coding flat objects and in particular letters sent by mail.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the known manner mail is coded to enable it to be sorted by automatic sorting machines during its transfer from the sender to the addressee via the mail organisation responsible for processing the mail.
The mail is usually coded with routing indicators so that it can be sorted for despatch to distribution offices or with distribution indicators so that it can be sorted for distribution to the addressees. These indicators are marked in coded form on the letters according to the addresses indicated by the senders, by means of printers.
The addresses are read either by human operators or by special-purpose optical readers. Such special-purpose optical readers do not generally have the adaptability of human operators and the mail that they are able to process has to conform to much stricter specifications.
The processing time assigned to such optical readers is exactly the same for all letters and as short as possible because of throughput considerations, leading to the use of high-speed, complex and therefore costly readers that have to be shared between a number of operators.
An object of the present invention is to combine the advantages of automatic coding by optical readers with those offered by manual coding by combining an optical reader with each manual coding station and making provision for varying the processing time according to inputting difficulties so as to offer an optimum throughput of mail, to limit the number of rejects due to failure to read the address and to optimize the work of the human operators.